Earn Money with Google Adsense: The Definitive Guide

Adsense by Google is one of the most popular ad programs on the internet. It has enabled thousands of people to earn money through simply displaying an ad block on their blog or website. Generally, Google Adsense is a profitable way to make money especially if you are a blogger.

Bloggers tend to give out a lot of information that helps people all over the world. Google’s philosophy has always been about helping people. So if your blog is information rich and it helps tons of people get help out of it, you may be missing out on a lot of income by not using Adsense to your advantage.

However, if you are new and want to make money online with Google, then you have come to the right place. This guide is an excellent place to learn how to make money with Google and have a sustainable income while you do your day job.

If you are new, you are probably wondering what Adsense is to begin with. So before you move on to the guide, let us tell you what Google Adsense is.

Google Adsense – A Brief Introduction

Adsense is perhaps the only ad program over the internet that is easy to use and is also one of the most convenient methods to earn money from your website.

When signed up and approved by Google, you are given a small code to embed into your website which displays an ad block. When people view or click this ad block, you earn money. Google doesn’t always require a click to help you make money, sometimes when enough people have viewed an ad block, you also get paid. This is called impressions by Google.

When someone clicks on the ad you have displayed, depending on the competition between advertisers, you are paid up to 68% or less through that click. The rest of the money goes to Google. Since Adsense depends a lot on competitive bidding, many advertisers compete against a slot by bidding on a spot. Whoever wins this bidding phase gets to order an ad with Google. The more competitive the spot, the more money they have to pay and the more money you earn.

This is why so many people will tell you to target keywords that are highly competitive because you are sure to make a lot of money that way.

Google AdSense is especially good for informational sites as we already mentioned above. Because if you aren’t selling anything and are only providing information, then you deserve some sort of compensation. That’s where Google Adsense comes in.

If you have already decided to start making money with Google Adsense, then keep reading on. This guide will tell you how to begin from the very start up until you can finally see some Adsense earnings coming in.

Things You’ll Need To Make Google Adsense Work

A hosting plan

A workable blog/website

A niche

Good traffic volume

A little information about keywords and general SEO

Lots of high quality and helpful written or visual content

How Much Can You Expect To Make With Google Adsense?

As mentioned above, the more competitive the ad, the more money you get paid. So if you have found a niche with keywords that are highly competitive, say for example an ad pays $2.68 per click, imagine how much you can earn when a lot of people click on the ad.

You can’t really find out how much exactly you will be making because it completely depends of the demand of products or services in your niche. Just remember, if your niche is popular amongst other bloggers, then expect to find a lot of competition.

If you really want to earn big money with Google Adsense, then you should understand how to determine and find commercially popular keywords. Commercial keywords are search terms people use with the intent to buy. This is an advance SEO trick which enables you to target people who will come to your page with the intent to always buy. Such keywords can easily convert people into paying. And these are also the people who will most likely click on the ad displayed on your website.

Although you cannot find how much an ad pays you exactly, you can still find out the amount of money you earn on a daily basis. Google Adsense comes with a very powerful dashboard with many different tools that help you find how much you are earning. Using the same dashboard, you can even find out which of your ads are being converted the most and which demographics are clicking on that ad particularly. We will talk more about it later in the guide.

Step 1 – Selecting a niche

A lot of other Adsense guides will immediately tell you to build a website and start putting on content. But if you plan on making good money with Google Adsense, you need to have a solid plan laid ahead of you. This is where niche selection comes in.

Niche is basically a topic range in which you will be putting out content. So in simple words, before you build a website, select a topic.

In order to select a topic, you will need general information about SEO. You need to know the traffic trends. Will the topic you select be receiving good amounts of traffic? Without good traffic, you cannot simply hope to make enough Adsense earnings. So it is very important to select a topic that has a lot of demand.

Generally, a good rule is to select topics that you are comfortable in putting out a lot of quality content. So if you have tons of knowledge about health and fitness and you believe you can give out a lot of helpful information on this topic, go for it. If however you have no idea about a given topic, it is generally a good idea to avoid starting a website around it.

The basic aim of your website should be helping people. If your content, not matter in what form, can help people out, your traffic will easily skyrocket and you will start earning money.

The biggest mistake people make while selecting a niche is that they tend to target niches that pay a lot of money per click. If you do not have enough knowledge about a niche that pays high, then it is useless to write in that niche because the competition will tear you apart.

Step 2 – Coming up with a content plan

Earning money through Google largely relies on good and helpful content. Without consistent high quality content that helps people, you cannot make enough. So it is very important to come up with a content plan.

After you have decided on a niche, start looking for content ideas. You should at least be able to write around 50 pieces of content on a topic you have selected. To find content ideas, one of the best ways is to find solutions to problems people are facing.

Question and answer websites such as Quora are a great place to find content ideas. You will be surprised at how many ideas you can instantly come up with once you visit one of these sites.

If you want to take things to a whole new level, try creating video content and upload it on YouTube. That way you can earn money from YouTube too and send back traffic to your website and make more money through Adsense.

There are also quite a lot of content types you can follow.

Some of the most popular content types are below:

How to’s – How to articles are one of the best ways to generate more traffic. A lot of people look for how to articles on the internet. Provide them with very detailed how to articles coupled with good images or videos and you will be surprised at how quickly your site will grow.

Product Reviews – product reviews or service reviews are generally used by Affiliate marketers to promote products but these reviews do get a lot of sustainable traffic so there is no reason one should not include these kinds of articles on their website.

Referenced Backed Content – if you want to earn the trust of your readers, one of the only proven methods of doing so is by giving references to strong research studies or case studies to back your content. Now a day’s anyone can open up a website and just write about anything that comes to their mind. This has caused people to distrust what they read on the internet except when they are provided enough evidence.

Long Articles – You may think that the shorter the article is the better there are chances that people will read. This is infact wrong. The longer your article is the more people tend to stick around. People have a lot of time to burn out so give them a very long but informative article and they will actually stay and read the entire piece. The longer they stay, the more chances that they will share your content and ultimately increase your traffic too.

No matter what your content plan is, be sure to follow these content guidelines to maximize your Google Adsense earnings.

Step 3 – Creating Your Website

Now that you have a niche and a good content plan, you can finally move on to create a website where this content will be posted. If you already have a website, skip to the next step. Otherwise stick around while we show you how it’s done.

Creating a website is a daunting task especially if you are not versed in technicalities that take place or you have no idea about website languages such as HTML, CSS, JAVA etc. If you know you can’t create a website, then you should go for professional help.

There are tons of freelancing platforms where you can find a developer to develop your website. But these are largely very hard to find a reliable developer. We recommend working with website or web service companies like vatask.com. These professionals have created hundreds of websites and they know how to deal with the whole process.

On the other hand, if you do know a bit about making your website, we highly recommend working with WordPress. WordPress is an extremely popular and Google supported content management system. Creating content through WordPress is easy and is already generally SEO’d to work with Google. So don’t go for any other content management software since the best is free to use.

When your website is up and running, start adding some useful plugins like the Google Adsense plugin which helps you create effective ad blocks on your site.

Step 4 – Getting Approved for Google Adsense

Getting approved for Google Adsense is the toughest part of this guide. Google doesn’t let you on the program so easily. This is because in the past there have been a lot of scammers who got approved on Google and sold their websites for huge amounts. This triggered Google to strengthen the platform to get in.

Since now it isn’t easy to get into Google, you’ll need to follow a tried and test pattern. The first thing you need to do is simply focus on putting out content. Write content on a daily basis for at least a few weeks.

Avoid publishing too much content in a single day because that will trigger Google to automatically decline your application to join Adsense. Once you have like 20 – 30 articles on your website, you should now be in a safe position to apply with Google for the Adsense program.

Once you are accepted, you only need to copy paste the HTML code the ad program gives you on anywhere in your website. There is an option to display text only ads or go for banner ads which are pretty and have nice graphic ads. Whatever you choose, it is up to your content planning.

From here onwards, keep posting great content and see how your earnings slowly go up. Following are some very important tips and tricks to make the best out of your Google Adsense account.

Tips and Tricks To Reach Massive Success With Google Adsense

Increase your traffic

As mentioned earlier, the more traffic you have, the more chances of making good money online. To increase traffic, you will need to understand basic SEO and perhaps even get help from a professional SEO. Search Engine Optimization or SEO is extremely important if you want more people coming on to your website.

When using WordPress, you have this plugin called YOAST SEO which is extremely helpful when you want to optimize your website. If you are not ready to gain help from a professional SEO, try following all the steps in this plugin and get your content optimized the way it tells you to. This should generally increase your traffic by a bit.

You can also create a Facebook page for your website and target social media to obtain more traffic. Create good content that is easily shared and your traffic will automatically sky rocket. Just be sure to make content that brings people to your website. If you create content that can be seen and consumed from Facebook alone, then you will have earned no money. So give them a reason to click on your Facebook post and come visit your website.

Experiment with ad types

Google gives you a lot of ways to place Adsense on your website. If you find that your website isn’t making enough, there could be a problem with your ad placement.

Ad placement is extremely important because if your readers don’t see an ad, how will they click on it? So try experimenting a lot with the placement of your ads. You can change the size, location or the type of ad you want to display using the Adsense dashboard.

You also need to make sure if you are using link advertisements, use the same color scheme you have on your website to display that ad block. Doing so will keep things easy for your readers and it will not be distracting for them.

Whatever you do, do not swarm your website with ads all over the place. This is highly disliked by Google and even your users will immediately shut your page down if your website is an ad mess.

Do not upload your website on free blogs – There are tons of places where you can start your blog. These blog platforms like Blogger.com or WordPress.org are not good for making money online. They also don’t tend to appear on search engines. So make sure that your blog is hosted on a private server and the domain is custom.

Have patience

Google Adsense is not a magic way to earn money quickly. Anything you put there will take some time to come in focus. Your traffic will gradually increase and so will the earnings. Just consistently keep posting good content and see how things turn into your favor. Give your website at least six months before seeing any sort of manageable results.

What to do if you do not get approved by Google

As mentioned earlier, getting into Google Adsense isn’t as easy as it was some time ago. If you get disapproved by the Google Adsense Team, don’t worry. Give your website a few more weeks and keep uploading new content and try again. You will eventually get accepted into the program if you are serious about it.

Another reason why you may not be getting approved is due to not closely following policies set by Google. Read them out really clearly before applying for the program and follow them religiously. One of the biggest and most important policies is creating good content. So if your content isn’t unique, your site may never get accepted.

Things to avoid when on Google Adsense

It takes only a few seconds for Google to disable your account. Recently, tons of publishers were disabled on Google Adsense because they were found to be taking part in fraudulent activity. This means that they were intentionally click on the ads placed on their website.

Google has a habit of monitoring where the clicks are coming from very closely because this is the only way they make money. So if you keep on click the ad by yourself or ask someone to do it, you will be immediately disabled. Keep things clean and Google will not bother you.

Another big reason for getting banned is by uploading content that doesn’t meet the requirement of Google. This content can be low quality or may contain inappropriate things that are not allowed to be uploaded when you are using Google. Google doesn’t allow adult content or content that promotes products like cigarettes or electronic cigarettes. So before choosing a topic, ensure that it is allowed on Google.

Final Notes

Google Adsense is an effective way to make money but it isn’t often the best way to live your entire life on especially if you are only running a single website. Google Adsense earnings can fluctuate a lot depending on the demand of content consumption. So don’t be surprised if your earnings go down the drain or vice versa.

The best way to counter this measure is to open up more websites with broadened up topics. Like they say, do not put all your eggs in the same basket is very much true for Adsense. There are tons of other ways you can monetize your blog. But if you tend to only stick to Adsense, have at least 2 – 3 working sites with great but different content across them.

If you follow all the steps accordingly, you will start seeing good sustainable income from Adsense. Just make sure not to run out of patience and try fraudulent activities like mentioned above. You simply cannot fool Google into making more money.